Sunday, July 17, 2016

Teacher: ‘There simply is a lot working against us’ - The Washington Post

This post is an open letter to teachers in North Carolina from one of their colleagues, Stuart Egan, who blogs at Caffeinated Rage about the assault on public education by legislators in his state. Egan is an English teacher in the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County School system, having taught all grades and levels of high school English. He currently teaches AP English Language and Composition and Shakespeare 101 and 102.

In his letter to colleagues, Egan writes about the difficulties that teachers — and public education — face in North Carolina today, though the overall sentiments don’t have to stop at the state borders. Many of the issues he discusses are equally true in other states.

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Egan makes reference to several bills specific to North Carolina. HB2 (House Bill 2) is the bathroom bill that discriminates against the LGBT population. TABOR is the badly named Taxpayer Bill of Rights where legislators are trying to put an amendment in the state constitution to cap state income tax at 5.5 percent. In North Carolina it is officially called House Bill 3 (HB3), and Egan says it would badly hurt public services. Here’s his letter:

Public school teachers,

You can’t really be measured.

In fact, those who are measuring you do not have instruments complex enough to really gauge your effectiveness.

If you are a public school teacher in North Carolina, you are always under a bit of a microscope when it comes to accountability. Everybody in the community has a stake in the public education system: students attend schools, parents support efforts, employees hire graduates, and taxpayers help fund buildings and resources.

But there are those who really question the path that public education has taken in North Carolina and lack confidence in our teachers and their ability to mold young people. The countless attacks waged by our General Assembly on public